Neuroses induced by the 'health scare of the week' have produced this strain of patient

By Dr James Le Fanu

12:01AM GMT 27 Nov 2005

Like all families' doctors, I have met John O'Connells many times in different guises and, though, of course, I find his health obsessions irritating, I have much sympathy for his plight.

He epitomises Plato's wise observation that "attention to health can be a major hindrance to life".

For the hypochondriac (and his is a more serious case than I suspect he realises) can be said to suffer twice over: both from their headaches, chest pains and bowel disturbances, and - more seriously - from their fear of what their symptoms might signify. Those fears induce further symptoms, to create a never-ending cycle of morbid anxiety.

It is a most invidious situation for which we doctors are mostly to blame by implicating every aspect of people's lives with some dire illness or other. The neuroses induced by the "health scare of the week" is compounded by the enthusiasm for screening to identify diseases that people did not know they had and the exaggerations that would have us dying in the millions from Aids, CJD and avian flu.

Thus, the medical profession has only itself to blame for the rise of the worried well, for whom the best approach is to counter their fears by emphasising the potentially serious adverse consequences of treatment.

Thus, were Mr O'Connell on my list, I would seek to discourage his request for a flu jab by pointing out how dozens of papers in medical journals have reported serious side effects caused by the vaccine. He would be better off, I would suggest, by taking his chances.